Formation Community in St. Louis, Missouri

Contact person for St. Louis: Sister Jessica Kerber, aci

If you were to walk into any Handmaid community, we dearly hope that you would feel our joy to have you present with us, sharing in prayer or over an extended meal, or maybe even a bonfire in the backyard. With a desire to share more with you about what is developing in the house of formation in St. Louis, we invite you into a conversation in our community room with our three sisters in formation: Nhan, Nhu, and Uyen.

Nhan, Nhu, and Uyen are in what we call the Juniorate, the period of formation directly following an intense 2-year novitiate and their first vows. Their main ministry during this time is that of studies, preparing them in various ways to further serve God’s people. Nhan is a sister from the US province who spent the 2 years of her novitiate in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Uyen and Nhu are from the Region of Vietnam and have been studying academic English since they arrived as well as entering into philosophy and theology this year. Besides being in their rooms or in the library studying, you might find any of them cooking in the kitchen, collecting vegetables from the community garden, playing the guitar, or teasing their formator.

Formation is not about intellectual formation alone, but about allowing the experience of God, knowing oneself more authentically, and encounters with the world around us in all its reality to form us as Handmaids with a desire to be women who are ready, capable, and desiring of being in this world “as in a great temple” (St. Raphaela Mary), desiring to make a full offering of a full self. Please continue to pray for our sisters in this intense journey of formation, and ask God to call more young women who are attracted by the joy and the desire to give of themselves fully within this vocation.